Our series on the forgotten advances in women's rights in four episodes:
Until 2005 ... women had to wait 300 days before remarrying
Until 2006 ... the minimum age for marriage was still 15 for women
Until 2016 ... periodic protection was not a staple product
Until 2017 ... the clitoris was banned from SVT manuals
The day it appeared in a school textbook was also the day it was discovered that it had been invisible until then.
It was in 2017. For the first time, 4th year students saw the female genitalia represented in its entirety, in the chapter dedicated to reproduction and sexuality.
Page 207
from the Earth Sciences and Life (SVT) book by Éditions Magnard, a little new one: the clitoris, finally correctly illustrated in an anatomical cut.
It is the only textbook to do so on 8 publishing houses.
An initiative hailed by the SVT Égalité collective at the time.
“Things are moving slowly, but they are moving forward!
Unfortunately, it must be said quickly, because of all the new textbooks, only one has updated its outline, ”declared this collective of teachers who fight against stereotypes in education.
Online launch of 1 triple activity of 1reS on the biological bases of pleasure, which attacks gender stereotypes, taboos associated with the clitoris and female pleasure, and is part of a real education in sexuality.
=> https://t.co/ibLeS56EAJ
- SVT Equality (@SVT_Egalite) February 3, 2018
However, since its "discovery" by the Italian anatomist, Realdo Colombo, in 1559, the clit is no longer incognito.
Already, the scientist knows that it is "the seat of the pleasure of the woman".
How then to explain its absence in the representation of female bodies?
How to justify this disappearance which will have lasted a century?
Until the beginning of the 20th century, the clitoris was indeed present in medical encyclopedias and other anatomical treatises… but for a precise reason: for a long time female pleasure was considered a factor of fertility.
No orgasm, no baby!
It disappears from the dictionary from 1930 to 1998
“When it was acquired that it was an organ exclusively reserved for female pleasure, and that it was of no use in reproduction, it simply disappeared.
It had become useless ”, laughs Julie Pietri, feminist activist and founder of Gang du Clito.
In 1930, it disappeared altogether from the dictionary.
An omerta which will last until 1998, date of the first validated dissection of the clitoris (by the Australian team of Doctor Helen O'Connell).
In the 2000s, the work of the gynecologist Odile Buisson, which shed light on its overall structure, and that of the sociology researcher, Odile Fillod, who created the first 3D model in August 2016, followed.
Inspired by this research, Julie Pietri brought the subject back to the forefront in March 2019. In partnership with the Ateliers du feminisme populaire and Gams (Group for the Abolition of Female Sexual Mutilation and Forced Marriage), she launched a petition "For teaching the clitoris in all SVT textbooks" where it is claimed "the right to equality of sex education".
The text collects more than 75,000 signatures.
Response from the Ministry of National Education?
"The publishers have complete freedom and responsibility as regards the conception, the choice of the authors, the writing and the illustration of the manuals which they propose".
Close the ban.
The ball is returned to the publishing houses.
According to the Ministry of National Education, it is not for them to control what is in school books!
😱 @jmblanquer @MarleneSchiappa
Answer below #clitoris # EgalitéHommeFemme pic.twitter.com/ammeMN24ds
- Itsnotabretzel (@itsnotabretzel) July 16, 2019
At the same time, Julie Pietri takes over the public space and starts a poster campaign entitled “It's not a pretzel”, representing the clitoris which, no, is definitely not a pretzel… We smile but the figures are there.
According to a report on sex education submitted in June 2016 by the High Council for Equality, 84% of 13-year-old girls do not know how to represent their sex while 53% know how to represent the male sex, and one in four 15-year-old girls don't know she has a clitoris.
Five publishers now represent it in their high school textbooks
After these actions, and on the occasion of the overhaul of the second and first year programs, five publishers (Nathan, Magnard, Bordas, Hatier and Le livre scolaire) now represent the clitoris in their second year textbooks, since the start of the school year. 2019-2020.
"But in college, Magnard is always an exception", specifies Julie Pietri.
Posted in Grenoble!
I loved it 👏🏼 pic.twitter.com/VoWAqGngvS
- Caly (@_caly__) March 11, 2019
“When I was in 4th grade, one of my classmates intervened to tell the SVT teacher that the clitoris was not on the anatomical section of the school textbook.
She reacted very well by telling him that she was right to point out and explained the role of this organ.
Then, we had as homework a complete diagram of the male and female genitalia, specifying the function of each element.
I remember that a friend had put, next to the clitoris, the words “it feels good” and that the teacher laughed saying that it was pretty well summed up, ”smiles Jade, a high school student in the 20th arrondissement. from Paris.
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“When you don't explain to young girls, like boys, how bodies work, it has repercussions on the adults they will become.
This lack of education can have terrible consequences, warns Chloé Thibaud, editor-in-chief of the feminist newsletter for teens, Les Petites Glo.
When we have no information, we search the Internet.
And what do we fall on?
Porn not really respectful of the notions of consent and female pleasure ”.
Talking about the clitoris is thus fighting, even without knowing it, against gender inequalities, the culture of rape but also against excision, insists Julia Pietri: "If we don't know that it exists, we don't know. that it must be protected, ”she sums up.